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December 5, 2006

More Thin Man

Filed under: Machining,Robots — Bob @ 9:39 pm

ttm.jpgI just finished uploading some more photos of the most recent minisumo project The Thin Man. You can see the whole project here.

This was one of my more ambitious projects and I’m really pleased with how it turned out. There is more work to do though. I’ve got to find a new, stronger battery that will still fit in the same form factor as the original one is just too weak for the latest GM11 motors I installed.

And I will probably make a new circuit board, those wire patches just look too ugly and I want to improve the layout of the line sensors and will probably raise the forward-looking sensors slightly.

And I really, really need to write some good software for it. I never did figure out what was wrong with the sensors at Robothon, but I’m sure its a software problem.

Hope you find the project as interesting as I did. The next likely competition I will enter will be the Western Canadian Robot Games, typically held in May every year in Calgary. I went out there this past May (pictures here) and had a great time but next year I will have a really cool minisumo to show off!

6 Comments

  1. Hi, Bob;

    Nice work on The Thin Man!

    Your approach of low overall height for stealth and low parts count due to integrated chassis + body + wedge design is an inspiration to robocrastinators such as me.

    And you had the confidence to run at under 400 g and still place at Robothon. Well done.

    I hope to see TTM at an event soon.

    Nicholas Barker

    Comment by Nicholas Barker — December 11, 2006 @ 1:47 pm
  2. Thanks Nicholas! This project was a real pleasure to design and build. I hope to continue to improve this robot to keep it competitive for the next few years.

    Comment by Bob — December 11, 2006 @ 8:05 pm
  3. Hi Bob i think similar Nice work

    Do you try with Li-poli bateries?

    greetings
    Rafael

    Comment by Rafael Sobrevilla — December 28, 2006 @ 10:52 pm
  4. Hi Rafael, thanks for the compliments. I am using this this LiPoly battery but I find its too weak for this application. I plan to upgrade to a more powerful LiPoly pack but haven’t bought anything yet. I find the LiPoly batteries excellent for small robots, light weight and good energy density. They need special chargers and they are much more expensive than other kinds though.

    Comment by Bob — December 29, 2006 @ 10:54 am
  5. Hi Bob,

    This looks really nice MiniSumo, I’ll have to link to this one. As Nicholas has said an inspiration!

    Best regards,
    Colin.

    Comment by Colin Durrans — February 9, 2007 @ 2:42 pm
  6. I thought my new sumo was going to be an original but looks like you beat me to it.
    http://er-online.co.uk/minisumo/forum/viewtopic.php?p=377#377

    Comment by Peter Waller — February 10, 2007 @ 3:14 am

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